1. Implementing in full the findings of the 2023 WA Parliamentary Inquiry into Homelessness
The Context: In the midst of Western Australia’s worst ever housing crisis, the WA Labor government actively opposed the establishment of a Parliamentary inquiry in 2022 and then refused to endorse its recommendations when they were released in 2023. Since then, they have failed to implement any of its findings, while WA’s housing crisis has escalated to emergency levels with the number of West Australians sleeping rough doubling since the last census.
2. Ending unfair evictions – changing rental laws to ban ‘no reason’ evictions
The Context: WA is the only state in the country that continues to allow no reason evictions, where families are evicted from their homes without being given any reason or a chance to address it. Last year, the Labor government rolled out reforms of WA’s rental laws but refused to remove no reason evictions despite a widespread campaign from the housing and community services sector. At the time, the WA government admitted they had failed to consult with any other state government that had already made rental law reforms, instead caving to pressure from the real estate lobby to enshrine unfair evictions in law.
3. Reforming public housing policy to prevent the eviction of children into homelessness
The Context: The WA government itself is also the largest landlord in the state with more than 30,000 public housing tenancies. The Labor government has evicted hundreds of families from public housing every year for no reason. More than 3,000 children were evicted to homelessness from public housing in a six year period under this Labor government. No wonder the WA government didn’t want to make renting in WA fairer by removing no reason evictions – they’re the largest landlord in the state, and they still evict hundreds of families for no reason every year.
4. Enacting a public housing maintenance program to reduce the more than 2,000 empty public houses in the midst of WA’s worst ever housing crisis
The Context: Despite being the richest state by a mile, WA has the most people sleeping rough in the country. Despite this, there are tens of thousands of homes sitting empty across WA. While more than 20,000 families are waiting on the public housing waitlist in WA, more than 2,000 WA public housing properties are empty, locked and boarded up. That’s more than 1 in 20 of the homes meant to be there for our most vulnerable families sitting empty and unused in the middle of a housing crisis.
5. Net zero homelessness by 2030 – enacting a mandated minimum annual investment in public housing to reduce the public housing waitlist from 20,000 families to 0 by 2030
The Context: Under the first term of this Labor government, while Simone McGurk was the Minister for Homelessness, they sold off or destroyed more than 1,000 public houses. Since then, they have failed to replace the existing stock so that under this Labor government there are fewer public housing tenancies than there was under the previous Liberal government. Every year the Liberals built an average of 1,000 public houses under Colin Barnett. I will pressure the government to commit to building 5,000 public houses every year to reduce the public housing waitlist to 0 by 2030.
6. Legislating to limit rent increases to the rate of inflation
The Context: This government’s rental reforms only limited the number of times a landlord can raise rent to once per year, without restricting the amount they can increase it. This means that many renters are now worse off than they were before these inadequate reforms, at risk of one massive increase in one go that could be beyond their capacity to pay, risking eviction and homelessness. To ensure stability, security and safety for renters, I will ensure a new round of rental law reforms will restrict rent increases to the rate of inflation.